


Mars, Bargains

by Querulousgawks



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Death in Childbirth, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 21:23:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3870244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young woman ducks shyly into view on the screen, and Veronica grips the desk to keep from slamming the laptop shut. <em>This </em> is the most powerful - she can barely say it in her head - necromancer to be found in the weird shadows of the internet? She hits the mute button, turns away to grit out, "Mac. This girl is wearing a teddy bear shirt."<br/>"And you don't look like a PI, Veronica," Mac says, then unmutes Skype and leans in. "Thanks for taking the time to see us, Ms. Rosenberg."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mars, Bargains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lodessa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/gifts).



> There are some brief descriptions of blood, and (similarly brief) implications of self-harm in here.

Keith gets the call from the hospital. Veronica lets herself collapse against him for long minutes before she pulls away, wipes her eyes and makes a phone call of her own. 

"I promised her, Mac," she whispers. Her dad will respect the closed door, especially in grief, but planning a federal crime immediately after the death of the sweetest person you knew- it just seems to call for a whisper. "Meg's parents can't get the baby. But Duncan..." she trails off. There's no good end to that sentence.

Mac takes an audible breath, cuts it off, takes another. Cuts it off. Veronica grins a little - even Q has her tells - then instantly feels guilty for it.  She shakes her head and begs, "Spit it out, please. I need to stop thinking."

Another breath, and Mac says haltingly, "I know somebody. There might be - an alternative."

 _"_ To Duncan keeping the baby?"

"To Meg being dead."

***

A young woman ducks shyly into view on the screen, and Veronica grips the desk to keep from slamming the laptop shut.  _This_ is the most powerful - she can barely say it in her head - necromancer to be found in the weird shadows of the internet? She hits the mute button, turns away to grit out, "Mac. This girl is wearing a teddy bear shirt."

"And you don't look like a PI, Veronica," Mac says, then unmutes Skype and leans in. "Thanks for taking the time to see us, Ms. Rosenberg."

The girl gives a sad half-smile, maybe more of a grimace, and Veronica reluctantly revises her estimate on age and experience. There's something old and shadowed in the smile that comes through even on a halting digital connection. 

"Call me Willow, guys. If you really go through with this, we're going to know each other pretty well by the end." She takes a breath. "Deaths can be reversed by appeal to the god we call Osiris..."

By the time Willow is done with what she calls  _some quick background information_ , Veronica's hand is cramped from taking notes and her doubts about expertise are completely gone. Doubts about safety, though - she looks at the list of ingredients they'll need, tries to hide her shiver in a stretch. She's been reminding herself throughout the lecture to treat this like a class, and not a theory to poke holes in, but her natural skepticism is hard to suppress and she finally bursts out with, "So you could just raise - anybody? Li - anyone could come back?"  _People know how to do this and they don't fucking share?_

Willow took several other interruptions cheerfully, but at this one a spasm of pain - or rage - crosses her face and the computer screen  _crackles_ , blue light skittering over the display. Mac grabs Veronica's wrist and jerks their hands off the desk, but the sparks disappear while they are still in motion. There's just Willow, her figure still on the undamaged screen, one hand held up while she turns her head away and takes long, slow breaths. 

Eventually she turns back, her face blank. "Sore topic," she says apologetically, but the casual words are at odds with her shaking hands, the blue-black shimmer around her frame. "It's a good question, though. Natural deaths can't be undone, and murder, accidents, most sicknesses are natural, according to the rules of this sort of thing."

Still shaken from the, well,  _magic,_  she's just witnessed - over  _Skype -_ Veronica tries to figure out how Meg didn't fit in that list. Bargaining, finding loopholes -that's what she's good at, right? She just can't get her head to clear.

Mac cuts in before she gets there: "Childbirth is  _unnatural_?" she squeaks, and Willow smiles a little.  

"It's more like it's, uh, prenatural? It existed before the rules were made, before there were people to make them, so they don't apply." She adds hastily, "It's not stronger, or weaker, than the magic I know. It's just...older."

"That is so weird," Mac mutters, and the last of Veronica's panic from the magic show dissipates when she and Willow snort at the same time. 

Veronica is reaching out for her pad again as Willow says, more soberly, "This part's going to be - rough. You'll need to catch a deer..."

***

It turns out they need four to cast the circle. Veronica calls Lizzie Manning first, feeling obscurely like she owes it to her. Lizzie is drawn and determined after her sister's death, a flash of her old self only showing when she asks hopefully if there's Satanism involved. 

" _No."_  Mac and Veronica say in unison, and Lizzie rolls her eyes. 

"Probably wouldn't work on Meg anyway," she mutters, and agrees  to meet them on Monday.

(This will take  _days,_ " Mac said when they first heard the ritual. "Will she - will her body be -" she looked away from Veronica, unable to finish.

"She'll be like she was," Willow promised gently, "physically.")

Lizzie makes three. Wallace is in Chicago. Duncan is – well, Veronica's been avoiding the suite for a lot of reasons. That rules out Logan, too, not that she can exactly see either of them jumping into the occult on her suggestion, anyway. After some grim rumination on just how short her friend list is, she calls Carmen Ruiz.

Carmen answers warmly, admits more hesitantly that she'd heard about Meg, then pauses for a full excruciating minute after Veronica's halting explanation. Long enough for Veronica to remember what it was like when everyone at school thought she was crazy, and wonder if she could handle it again, if she has to. ( _Yes._ Better than she could handle Meg gone from the world forever, better than another motherless girl in Neptune.) She's wearily running through that short, short list when Carmen says, "I actually heard  - you know what? I'm in." Just like that.

Veronica, distracted by relief, doesn't follow up on what Carmen 'actually heard' about their plans. So it's a surprise when she swings by the apartment with a glass jar of blood, sloshing gently and still bright red - airtight, then. Someone had known the drill. Veronica leans in curiously and flips the tag, reads it aloud. 

"'All the ritual sacrifice in this town goes through me.' Of  _course_." She shakes her head, then glances up, trying to keep her face blank. "Are you two..."

Carmen just raises her eyebrows. "You really do want them all, don't you?" The reference stings, which must show because Carmen relents: "He beat up my ex, I got him through geometry - we're friends, now. Kind of. The thing is, he knows what it's like, Veronica, you know? I think he went looking in the same place you did, and got a different answer."

Right. Nothing liminal and rule-transcending about a dead PCHer on the Coronado bridge. She pushes down guilt, and worry, and reminds herself that she still has leads for that case. As soon as Meg is - back - Veronica can get Weevil answers the old way.  

She hopes that way will feel like enough, after this.

Carmen is still holding out the jar, straight-armed, as far as she can get it from her body. Veronica takes it with about the same level of enthusiasm. "Well," she sighs, "at least Mac can cancel that father-daughter hunting trip."

***

They meet in the funeral home on the last possible night. Carmen and Lizzie are leaning against one wall, looking pensive and hostile, respectively. Veronica is staring into the casket. She's never seen Meg in such dull colors, and a fresh surge of hatred for the Mannings runs through her. 

At the edge of the room, and her attention, Mac and Willow are conferring over their supplies. "I can't believe you found this," is followed by Mac's awkward, "...my boyfriend's rich. And kind of amoral?" Carmen's bark of a laugh makes everybody jump. 

"Just - you need to watch out for those." She says in explanation and Mac meets her eyes, offers a tentative smile. 

"I will. Thanks."

"Places, guys." Willow herds them into the circle sketched on the floor, then steps outside it. ( _I don't...practice, anymore_ , she had said online, and something in her tone made it impossible for even Veronica to ask more.)

Carmen opens the jar. Lizzie takes Willow's knife and splits her palm - too neatly, too familiar - then glares around the circle in challenge. Mac holds out a battered clay tablet, patchy with dust. The room doesn't smell like the 21st century anymore: the flowery, chemical scent is driven out by blood and ash. 

"Last chance," Willow says steadily, her voice low and kind. She would let them walk away. Veronica closes her eyes.

 _I'm going with_ you _, silly._

_You have friends, Veronica._

_Getting tough? That was good advice. I needed that._

_If anything happens to me -_

She opens them again. They need the real Meg, not the wavering memories, not this false idol of the Mannings lying gray in a casket. 

 _I hope you got tough,_ Veronica thinks at the still face below her. _I hope we all did._

She raises her knife. 

***

"What day is it?" Meg asks, much later, after the light show is over, after they all took deep breaths and left the funeral home and hugged each other like their hands weren't shaking. Operation Custody could start tomorrow - tonight's almost turned into an ordinary sleepover, if you could ignore the witch conked out on the couch and the funereal makeup Meg just wiped off. Veronica checks the dim glow of her alarm clock - well after midnight.

"Tuesday now, so - December second?" she says absently, then pauses, remembers just as Meg's eyes widen, Lizzie gasps, and Mac and Carmen exchange baffled glances. Veronica's about to apologize when she sees Meg grin, and after a minute they are both cracking up; relief, guilt, nerves bubbling out as hysteria.

"Well?" Meg demands between wheezes, "Where's my cake? Some friends you are."

Veronica swallows one giggle, and manages to hold the next back enough to say it. "Happy Birthday, Meg."   


End file.
